Our new 70-year-old, Chicago-born Pope, Pope Leo XIV, just took issue with exorbitant billionaire pay packages. He mentioned how the gap between the upper class and everyone else continues to widen, and specifically called out Elon Musk.
He was reacting to a headline that some maniacs will cheer while the rest of us either groan or seethed with anger: Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.
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To this, our new pope, who most assuredly ate a Chicago beef sandwich at some point or another, told Crux, “If that is the only thing that has any value anymore, then we are in big trouble.”
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The pay package Tesla is dangling in front of Elon is valued at a trillion dollars. It seems like it exists to keep Elon focused on his business pursuits and not all the other silly bulls**t he got entangled in—like his disastrous foray into politics or his weird AI bot.
Then, of course, more importantly, there is the sobering reality that inequality has been rapidly accelerating for some time now. Statistics gathered by Inequality.org show that in the U.S., the top 0.01 percent, which comprises roughly 12,000 households, are growing their income nearly 27 times faster than the bottom 20 percent.
A CEO used to make only six times what a worker did. Today, it’s 600 times that of the average worker. Simply put, the rich are getting significantly richer than they ever have before. And the poor are poorer, with no end in sight, no relief for the rest of us, and no hero swooping in to save us.
Meanwhile, it seems every new American political leader only wants to cater exclusively to the megarich.